There is talk of stopping all ITT courses for a year to tackle the situation, which is only set to get worse as this year's cohort graduate. In Scotland, all teachers are guaranteed a job for a year after ITT in order to complete their 'probationary' or NQT year. It seems employers are abusing this situation by taking on the NQTs and then dumping them afterwards, to take on more cheap temporary NQTs to fill the gap next year.

Training as a teacher is very very hard work, and to have no chance of gaining employment in the sector after all of that, and through no fault of your own, must be heart breaking. Not only that, it looks awful on your CV and will need to be explained in every job interview for every job for the rest of their career. "Why did you not gain permanent employment straight after your probationary year?"

Desperation to get jobs like this mean more teachers are accepting positions that they are not 100% comfortable with, for example, teaching subjects they are not familiar with or age ranges they have no experience of. I don't need to tell you what effect this has on students and on learning.